


Trapper John, Civilian M.D.

by mynameisnemo



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: 1950s, Bad Dreams, Civilian Life, F/M, Korean War, PTSD, Post season three, post war experience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-21 01:06:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4809077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mynameisnemo/pseuds/mynameisnemo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If you're going through hell, keep going."<br/>-Winston Churchill</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. “Where were you?”

The first few months back aren’t hard. Sure, at first it takes a while to remember that when someone calls for John, that it’s him who is supposed to respond. He misses hearing someone call for Trapper but he supposes that will wear off soon. 

He’s nervous for the whole series of flights connecting across the Pacific; every dip in the air stream making him think of Radar doing everything he could to hold it together, to tell them that Henry was gone. He holds his latest picture of Louise and the girls, snapped by a neighbor on a sunny afternoon in the backyard, so hard that he puts a permanent crease in it. 

When he walks through the doors, off the tarmac at Logan, he sees Louise right away. She’s holding both of the girl’s hands, both of them jumping up and down as they wait for him. As soon as she catches sight of him Louise bursts into tears, mascara running down her cheeks. Trapper doesn’t think he’s ever seen her look more beautiful. 

The first few days are filled with welcomes. Welcome home sex, welcome home barbecues, welcome home visits from the family. He loves every second, the girls hanging from him, Louise constantly brushing a kiss to his head or his shoulder or his lips as she walks by. 

Soon enough life goes back to the routine, the girls have to get back to summer school and girl scouts, Louise has to get back to her job at the library and her volunteering duties. Trapper also has to return to normal. After so much time spent away in Korea, he has to find a new position at Massachusetts General. It’s not too hard to find a place on the surgical staff and he starts settling in. 

Soon enough though, he starts to feel like maybe that first break was just luck. Almost as soon as life gets back to what passes as ‘normal’, the nightmares set in. 

At first it’s bodies in the OR. It’s unsettling, waking up feeling like he’s just pulled a thirty hour stretch. Instead of waking up in the Swamp or propped against a pole in the mess tent though, he’s in bed in Boston. 

As if they are just testing him, the nightmares gradually get worse. Soon he finds himself alone in the triage area, bodies on gurneys everywhere but no one around to help. He wakes up frantic, finding that instead of the lights of an ambulance shining in his eyes, it’s the sun through the curtains. It’s unsettling but he just starts drinking more coffee and figures things will even out eventually. 

Things don’t even out. Instead of just waking up, wanting to yell for a nurse, another doctor, anyone, he gets trapped. Stuck in the dream, stuck in the memories, unable to wake up. Soon enough he dreams that he’s in the OR, but this time he isn’t alone. He looks down and sees Henry laying on the table, staring at him, still wearing that ridiculous fishing lure hat. “Trapper, you’ve got to help me,” he says, and blood wells up past his teeth, spilling out of the corner of his mouth. “Come on, after all those stunts you pulled you’ve got to help me out.”

Trapper takes a step back. He wants to tell Henry that he can’t help, that Henry’s already dead, but he can’t get the words out. Blood keeps welling up, spilling out of Henry onto the operation table even though there’s no wounds that Trapper can see. 

When a drop hits his foot he jerks back again, running into the gurney behind him. When he turns there’s Father Mulcahy, leaning on one elbow, his glasses dangling from one ear. “Come now, Trapper, you must help us,” he says. Trapper can see his wound, can see his intestines pushing through the gash in his stomach. He feels bile rise in the back of his throat and pushes away from both of them, turning and running out of the brightly lit room. He keeps running into more gurneys, tries to ignore the faces, the bodies, the injuries. 

These aren’t nameless, faceless soldiers of some regiment that was trying to take hill 403, these are his friends, the people he lived with for the last eternity, and they are all dying. 

He reaches the door out of post-op finally, ignoring the way he can hear Frank’s high pitched giggle from somewhere in the room behind him. As he rushes through, trying to reach the door to outside, he trips, shouting when he realises he tripped over Radar’s outstretched legs. The kid is leaning up against the wall, staring straight ahead, his teddy bear clutched in his arms and soaked in blood. With a sob, Trapper pushes away, standing up. He doesn’t even have to check the kid’s pulse to know that he’s dead. 

Finally, finally, he makes it to the door out, stumbling as his boots hit the compound dirt. 

He almost expects the place to be lifeless, bombed out, but instead all the people he passed inside are suddenly milling around outside. It’s incongruently sunny and in the light he can see the injuries even better than he could indoors. He can see Klinger’s dress, soaked in blood, one arm holding his rifle while the other is just gone. Margaret walks by, and first he thinks she’s fine, she is the first person he’s seen not covered in blood. As she moves past though, he realises that the back of her head has been blown away completely. 

He turns again, getting ready to run away from the compound, and comes face to face with Hawkeye. 

The man is standing there, not a drop of blood on him, his fatigues as pristine as Trapper has ever seen them, right down to his scuffed boots. 

“Where were you?” Hawkeye asks, and he sounds angry and frightened and lost. “You left and we needed you.”

Trapper wants to say sorry but when he opens his mouth he can’t make any sound come out, can’t take his eyes away from the bullet hole centered exactly in the middle of Hawkeye’s forehead. 

“Where were you? You didn’t even say goodbye, you bastard.” 

Trapper comes awake with a sob, jerking upright all of a sudden. It takes a second, blinking in the early morning light that is filtering in through the curtains, to realise that he’s in bed in Boston. 

Louise rolls over, pushing herself up a little on one arm, and for one second Trapper thinks she’s covered in blood, her nightshift almost black with it. He blinks and realises it’s not, it’s white as snow. He pushes himself out of bed just as she reaches for him. 

“John?”

“Go back to sleep,” his voice breaks on the last word and he has to swallow, clear his throat. “It’s okay, go back to sleep.”

She looks worried for a second but then just nods, settling back down and closing her eyes. 

He leaves the bedroom, going downstairs and putting on a pot of coffee. It’s Saturday and luckily the girls won’t be up until later; Louise won’t get up until they wake her to make breakfast. Trapper sits at the kitchen table, head in hands and listens to the percolator gurgle, tries not to think about Hawkeye standing in the compound, looking so accusing.


	2. “My wife, Wonder Woman.”

The nightmares don’t get better but Trapper finds he can deal with them. Louise is a heavy sleeper and doesn’t usually wake up. He starts drinking on Friday and Saturday nights, when he knows he won’t have to go into surgery the next day, and stops going to church on Sunday morning. 

Louise doesn’t pressure him on it, just tells Becky that just because Daddy doesn’t want to go to mass on Sunday morning doesn’t mean that she’s also exempt. It gives him a few hours in the morning to himself. He wonders what she would say if he told her that he almost never attended in Korea. If he told her that Sunday mornings not spent in the OR or in post-op were mostly spent either getting drunk or being hungover. 

One Sunday, a couple months after he gets back, he decides he’s going to use the time to write Hawkeye. He starts out by having a glass of whiskey, in Hawkeye’s honour. 

By the time Louise and the girls get home, he’s written two words and drank half the bottle. 

Louise sends the girls to play with the neighbors, not even asking them to change out of their church clothes first, and then pulls him up out of the kitchen chair where he’s sitting. Somehow she manages to drag him all the way upstairs and into the shower. He wonders how she manages it, she looks so tiny, but she’s strong, like the superheroes in the comicbooks Cathy likes to read while she’s supposed to be doing her homework. 

“My wife, Wonder Woman,” he slurs, the words getting lost as she pushes his head under the spray. When she lets him come back up for air, she pats his head. “Don’t drown,” is her advice before she leaves the room. 

He stays under the warm spray until he feels somewhat sober again, then gets out and dries off. He gets dressed and goes downstairs. The girls are outside somewhere, he can hear their shouting through the open window, and Louise is doing dishes in the kitchen. She’s gotten rid of the whiskey, but left the letter on the table. When he sits down at the table she turns off the water and turns, drying her hands. He glances up but then looks down, studying the scratch Cathy put in the varnish last week while she was cutting out paper dolls. 

Louise sighs, moving around for a moment before coming to sit next to him, setting two cups of coffee down. He picks his up, sipping at it and thinking how good it is, so much better than the caffeinated dishwater they’d drank in Korea. It’s made perfectly, with cream and a hint of sugar, just the way he’d liked before he left. His eyes are wet and he still can’t meet hers when she reaches over, covering his hand with her smaller one. 

“John.”

He blinks and feels a tear escape, running down his face to rest on his upper lip. 

“John, I’m not angry.” 

He’s so startled that he sets his coffee down hard on the table, sloshing the hot liquid over the side. 

She reaches up, ignoring the spill, and cradles the side of his face in her hand. “I’m not angry at all. I can’t tell you I understand how you feel, what you’re going through, because I don’t. But I also can’t be angry at you, not over this.”

“Louise.” He starts to tell her everything. Everything he hasn’t been able to tell her about since he got back, about the casualties and Henry and the shelling and Hawkeye and how he didn’t get to even say goodbye to the man who got him through it all. All the words jam up in his throat and for a second he can’t breathe, the only noise he can make is an ugly sobbing sound. 

She pulls his head down onto her shoulder, running her fingers through his curls and petting his shoulders, making shushing sounds in his ear and he just cries. His tears soak the collar of her dress and her perfume is the only thing he can smell, her heartbeat steady under his palm where it’s pressed to her chest. 

Later, after he’s wiped away the tears with her handkerchief and she’s kissed his forehead and told him that she loves him, he stands, going to get his sneakers and football. He promised Becky that he would teach her how to throw it in one of his many letters home and today seems like a good day to start. Louise mops up the mess with his coffee, rinsing out the rag in the sink and smiles over her shoulder at him as he goes out the door. 

He doesn’t think about the coffee stained sheets of paper sitting in the wastebin, with two shaky words at the top: “Dear Hawk.”

After that he doesn’t drink on Sunday mornings anymore and he doesn’t write Hawkeye anymore either.


	3. “Hush, John.”

Of all the things Trapper missed while he was in Korea, the Fourth of July was high on the list. Growing up in Boston came with a certain amount of patriotic pride and no matter how he felt about the government and the military now, he was still proud to stand with his hand over his heart as they played the Star Spangled Banner. There was something about it, Becky’s hand sticking to his from the popsicle juice she’d dripped on it, hearing Cathy mumble along with the words where she stood on his other side, that somehow made some of the tragedy he’d seen in Korea seem almost worth it. 

He had missed the barbeques, the tables laden with pies and potato salad. He’d missed handing out beers to the men standing around the grill. He’d missed the fireworks even though now it took conscious effort not to jump at each loud report, struggling not to be reminded of huddling with Hawkeye behind sandbags as different sorts of bombs dropped just yards from where they were hiding. 

He noticed he wasn’t the only one flinching, not the only one whose knuckles shone white in the glare of the colourful explosions. There’s the man who is easily old enough to be his grandfather, gripping his cane hard enough to make the wood creak. A boy who looks only maybe a year out of highschool with his hands pushed over his ears. A woman who could be nurse Kellye’s sister staring up at the sky with tears streaming down her face, her arms wrapped around herself. 

After the show is over, Louise takes her hand back, shaking it out, and he realises that he’d been holding it so hard that he probably left marks. Still, she just smiles, leaning over and brushing a kiss over his cheek. She stands, going to collect her casserole dish and kiss the girls goodnight. He gathers their blanket up and folds it, pasting a smile on his face that he knows won’t look too strained in the halflight of all the sparklers that are lighting up. He hands a few over in exchange for kisses and tells the girls to behave for Mrs. Janssen who is watching them tonight during some kind of girl scout sleep out thing in the park. He doesn’t envy the woman, even though she volunteered to watch the girls knowing they would be hopped on sugar and excitement. 

Louise returns from where she was standing by the table, cooing over Jamie and Jolene’s twin boys, who had slept through the fireworks like what else but babies. 

She smiles as she leans into him under the arm he puts around her shoulder and they follow some of their neighbors across the Common, heading back to their cozy neighborhood. Once they get home she drops the dish in the sink to soak and he toes off his shoes and socks, following her barefoot outside to lay in the deckchair in the backyard. It’s not late and he’s not even buzzed but the air is still and warm and the fireflies are out in force above the recently mowed grass. She lays on top of him in the chair, the skirt of her sundress bunched up around her thighs, her head cradled against his collarbone, her hand brushing over his chest, almost light enough to tickle through his T-Shirt. 

She sighs contentedly, the breath curling over his ear, and shifts slightly, and when she speaks he can feel the words against his neck. 

“What do you think about having another? Maybe trying for a boy?”

It’s not the first time since he’s been back, that had been the night he got back after the girls had been convinced to go to bed. It’s not even close to the first time and he loves the idea of it, loves the idea of another child, a little sister or brother for Cathy and Becky, the idea of Louise looking so happy like she did the first two times, even as she complained about her feet hurting and all the weird cravings. They had always talked about a big family, knowing that his job could support it, that their ideas of raising children were compatible. 

He can feel his pants getting tight, can feel her thighs where they are pressed against him, the shift of her breasts against him every time they breathe. 

Suddenly his chest feels tight and he doesn’t know why this is happening right now but all he can feel is an overwhelming sense of guilt. 

He pulls back, moving his arm from where it’s curled around her tiny waist, so that he’s just supporting her instead of holding her to him. 

For a moment they are out of sync, he’s withdrawing just as she moves to kiss him. Then she seems to catch up. 

“John-”

“Louise-”

They both break off and he tries to paste that grin on again but he can feel how watery it is, a pale imitation that is visible even in the dim light from the kitchen. He takes a shaky breath and she wraps the arm that had been caressing him around his ribs in a hug. 

“What is it?” she asks, squeezing briefly. 

For a second he considers brushing it away but he can’t do it. He’s been lying for so long, even if it’s just a lie of omission and he doesn’t want to keep it up. “Louise, when I was in Korea-” He swallows, pausing. Maybe she’ll just guess and he won’t have to say the words, but she doesn’t, just waits patiently for him. “In Korea, I...me and a couple of the nurses. I mean, not just a couple…” he trails off and suddenly realises that he’s closed his eyes, that she’s still laying against him but she’s not making any sound. He pops his eyes open fast, afraid of what he’ll see but she’s just sitting patiently, as if he hadn’t half confessed to years of infidelity. For a second he wonders if she just hasn’t understood. “I slept around. A lot. In Korea. While I was gone.” 

He stops again, can feel his heart thumping in his chest. He wonders why he confessed, why he told her, why he ruined their perfect evening. She’s still sitting there, her face still in that perfect expression of patience. He tries to think of something else to say but ludicrously all he can hear is tick tick tick from the inside of his skull, like a record needle running around after the record has finished playing. 

After a few beats of silence she nods, then extracts herself, standing and going inside without a word. 

As the screen door closes softly behind her, he suddenly feels like he’s freezing. His hands and feet are ice blocks and gravity has done something insane because he’s being crushed into the chair and he can’t think of anything at all except for that tick, tick, tick.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, frozen, when suddenly she’s back. He expects her to start screaming, even though she rarely raises her voice, and he is reminded of Margaret for a moment. Then she leans over, setting something down on the table next to him and he can’t even make his head turn to see what it is. 

She’s taken her hair down, the curls falling over her shoulders, and as she stands again, her scent washes over him, perfume and shampoo and a hint of sweat from spending the day in the sun. The smell galvanises him and he suddenly feels like he can move, breathe, again “Louise-”

She reaches down, putting a finger over his lips, freezing him again. “Hush, John.” She keeps her eyes on him for a moment, until she’s sure he’s stopped, then withdraws her hand. 

He sits still as she reaches down, bunching up her skirt and then swinging a leg over his to straddle him. She settles quickly, in his lap, with her knees resting on the pad of the seat against his thighs, then reaches over to retrieve what she had put down. He unfreezes long enough to reach up and take the cold beer she hands to him, but he still can’t move to take a sip of it as she extracts a cigarette from the pack she had brought out and lights it, as she puts the pack and lighter down and picks up her own beer.

The cigarette is the only tell that she is anything other than utterly calm. She had stopped when she got pregnant the first time and since only smoked rarely, when very stressed. He’s smelled it on her a few times since he came back but hadn’t brought it up. 

She takes a long pull of her beer and another drag, breathing out and staring down at him, her gaze considering. Finally, she speaks. “Did you sleep with anyone else? Before you left?”

He thinks about his highschool girlfriend, the girls from college, the woman on the train before he met her, then realises he meant since her and shakes his head. “No,” he adds, when it doesn’t seem like enough, his voice rusty like he hasn’t spoken in days. 

She nods, resting her beer against his stomach. He can feel the condensation soaking through his shirt, the circle of chill on his skin in contrast to the heat of her body where it’s rested against him. 

“And in Korea.” She pauses, takes another drag. “Did you love any of the women? The nurses?”

This one he doesn’t even have to think about. “No.” 

She nods again. “And has there been anyone since you came back?”

Another quick no and suddenly she relaxes, catching him by surprise because he hadn’t even realised she’d been tense. 

She finishes her cigarette and puts it out in the ashtray on the table, then rests her head against his collarbone. 

“Do you want there to be others?” she asks, though he can hear in her voice that she already knows the answer. 

He mirrors her, putting his free hand on her shoulder, needing the extra connection to push the words to her, to make sure she knows he’s telling the truth. “No, never.” 

She smiles, moving her hand from his shoulder to tangle her fingers in the curls at the base of his head. “You were scared, over there, John. Scared and lonely and so far away. You were in danger of dying every day and they took you away from me so I couldn’t be there.” 

He’s surprised by how much hate he can hear in her voice when she says ‘they’, didn’t know how much hate his calm, sweet, gentle wife could have. 

“I don’t blame you for needing comfort in the face of all that, John, and I can’t blame you for needing a distraction. As long as you promise me that’s all it was” she trails off and he nods. She smiles suddenly and it’s blinding, like the first warm sunny day after a long cold winter. “Good.” She leans down, settling against him in a fully bodied embrace. “Drink your beer, John.” 

He automatically takes a sip, then takes a longer pull as the liquid makes him realise how dry his mouth has become. He swallows and she traces her finger across his jaw, down over his adam’s apple. 

“Did you tell me because you don’t want another baby?” she asks against his shoulder and he shakes his head quickly, crossing his arms around her and feeling her shiver as the cold glass of the bottle rests against her bare sunburnt shoulder. 

“No, no, I just. I couldn’t keep it from you anymore. I would love another kid, wouldn’t even mind if it was another girl.”

She laughs and he thinks about how lucky he is that he has her, that he made it home to her again. 

“Another girl,” she says, her shoulders still shaking from laughter.” You are a glutton for punishment, John Xavier. Don’t you know that you’re already outnumbered?” 

He laughs with her. “Good thing I was in the Army, then, they taught me how to be outnumbered.” 

She laughs again and he dips his head to press a kiss to her hair, feeling lighter somehow, warm and safe and loved and content. 

They wake in the morning, stilled curled together on the chair in the yard, to the girls banging in through the front door, chattering excitedly about the puppies they saw for sale down the street and how Mrs. Janssen just got Liz a puppy too. 

Trapper stands on his backporch in his yard in Boston, stretching kinks out of his back in the midmorning sun and yawning as Louise goes inside to start coffee and brunch, catching her raised eyebrow as he picks up their empty beer bottles and her cigarettes before coming inside. He shrugs at the silent question, then winks and grins, feeling loose and easy, before following the girls into the living room. 

A puppy and a baby and maybe he should see about getting a raise at work. It sounds like they might be needing more space and his luck has been good lately.


	4. “Let’s start with the punch.”

Cathy’s birthday falls on the last Saturday before school starts and somehow she had managed to convince them that a sleepover was a great idea. Trapper wakes to the sound of a dozen girls under the age of ten doing probably irreparable damage to his home, Sadie whining to be let out, and Louise moaning as she rolls over. “I will pay you to go and make breakfast,” she mumbles into her pillow and he laughs. For a moment he’s reminded of Hawkeye, how some mornings the man seemed to be magnetised to his cot. He thinks for a second about calling Hawkeye in Korea, telling him that he thinks Louise might be pregnant again. They aren’t sure yet but they’ve been trying. Oh boy, have they been trying. He hasn’t found the words to write Hawkeye yet but maybe if he calls the words will come easier. 

He’s interrupted from his reverie as Sadie whines again, her voice bleeding with Becky’s shriek of outrage downstairs in the most discordant harmony he’s ever heard. 

“I think this is an ‘all personnel’ situation,” he says, dragging the covers off the bed with him as he gets up, smiling as Louise makes a disgruntled sound and curls up. “I’ll let Sadie out, you deal with the unruly horde.”

Louise sits up as he pulls on a pair of his old Army dungarees, making a face as she presses a hand to her stomach. “Ah, ah, buster,” she says after a moment, the nausea seeming to settle. “I’ll let Sadie out, you deal with the horde. You speak their language.” 

He throws on a robe quickly, hearing from the pitch of the squabbling downstairs that he has only moments before it breaks into full-fledged tears. “Need me to make breakfast?” 

“No,” Louise says, belting her own robe, “I’ll manage. Now get.” 

He gets, knowing he got the better end of the deal as he hits the landing at full steam. The girls have gone silent downstairs at the sound of his footsteps and he sees a couple of them looking guilty, especially Cathy where she’s untangling her hand from Becky’s hair. “Alright monkeys, who’s up for a game?”

“We definitely got the better end of the deal, hmm Lady?” Louise says softly as she follows him down at a more sedate pace.

~.~

The mob fed and released into the wilds of the backyard to torture Sadie, breakfast cleaned up and listening to Louise singing along with the radio while she makes a cake, Trapper dances a little bit while he straightens up the living room. He has a lot to do; set up the backyard for the party, pick up Aunt Carol from the bus station, bring Cathy’s presents downstairs, but he loves every minute of his busy day.

In the backyard someone starts crying and he’s heading to find out what’s going on when the phone rings. He figures it’s Carol calling to say she’s arrived and he answers, expecting he’ll have to tell her it will be a minute while he deals with whatever crisis is happening before he can leave. He’s craning his head, trying to see what’s going on through the window when he answers distractedly, “McIntyre taxi service, how may I direct your call?”

His attention is brought around sharply at the voice on the phone, it’s not Carol. “Sir? Is this Mr. John McIntyre?”

He hopes it’s not an emergency at the hospital. He can’t leave Louise alone with all these kids. “Yes, uh-”

“This is the operator, I have a call from a Mr. Pierce in Crabapple Cove, Maine? Would you like me to put it through?”

He jerks the phone away from his ear, staring at it. Is Hawkeye home and calling him? 

“Sir?”

He hurriedly puts the phone back to his ear at the tinny question, unease settling in his stomach. “Um, yes. Yes, please.” 

He can hear her talking to the other end of the line, then the sound of the call being connected. 

“Hawkeye, Hawkeye, is that you?”

“Trapper?” The voice on the other end of the line is unfamiliar and Trapper feels his insides freeze. “Trapper John?”

“Is this Mr. Pierce Senior?” Trapper hears himself ask and he wonders what puppeteer is pulling his strings. 

“Trapper, have you heard from anybody at the 4077th? I can’t get a call through and-” The voice chokes off and Trapper feels nauseous. He can still hear one of the girls crying in the background and Louise is standing in the door in a flour smudged apron and a concerned look and his voice won’t work. 

“Trapper?” the voice asks. “This is Daniel Pierce, Hawkeye’s dad.” A pause. “I got a telegram this morning.” 

Trapper feels his fingers go numb but Louise is there to catch the receiver. Trapper dimly hears her speaking from far away but it is muffled and he can’t understand the words. He finds suddenly that he’s sitting down, leaning against the wall with his head between his bent knees and Becky is resting her hand on his knee, her eyes wide with concern. 

Cathy is standing with a gaggle of girls in the door to the kitchen and Liz Janssen is holding a bloody washcloth to her arm and Trapper can only hear wind rushing through his ears and somewhere, someone is crying, sobbing like the world is ending. 

Louise hangs up the phone and everything snaps back into place. He realises that it’s him making those awful sounds of sorrow and Becky’s hand is dirty where it’s resting on his dungarees and there are fourteen little girls in his house but he’s the one sobbing like a child, scaring them. 

“Cathy, Liz, bathroom. Clean up that cut like your daddy taught you but no bandages and I’ll be there in a moment. Girls, go play with Sadie outside, Mr. McIntyre will be okay.” Louise pauses. Trapper thinks he loves his wife more than anything else in the world. “Becky, you too, outside.” 

Becky hesitates, then presses her lips to his temple, the same way he does with her when he’s putting her to bed or when she’s had a nightmare, and follows her friends outside. Louise bends down, hooking her hands under his arms. “Up you go, Big John, come with me.” He lets her lead him into the den and he knows they don’t have much time. “Mr. Pierce says he doesn’t know what happened, no one has called him. He’s going to try getting through to the unit and he’ll call back. In the meantime I need you to be my big strong husband, just until Carol gets here, okay?”

He nods against her automatically but then he thinks of Hawkeye, dying in that place so far away. Hawkeye who he always thought he’d get a chance to talk to again, who he had been planning to call just that morning, who he never even got to say goodbye to. “I’m sorry, Louise, he just, I, he-”

She shushes him, rocking him gently. “I know, hon, but I need your help today. Tonight we’ll call Daniel back and find out what he knows and tomorrow we’ll get you a train up there.” 

“Louise, I can’t. You and the girls and the baby and-” 

“You can and you will, John Xavier,” she says firmly. “Carol can help me here, and Helga Janssen and Becky and Cathy can help me. Daniel has no one and he’s just lost his son so you need to go help him.”

The rest of the day passes in a haze. Trapper doesn’t know what Louise says to the girls but they leave him alone, let him set up in peace. He feels bad for scaring them but he doesn’t know how to explain, to apologise. He’s walking by the kitchen when he hears Cathy whispering. “Mommy, what’s wrong with Daddy?”

“Daddy got bad news about a friend in Korea, honey, and he’s sad right now but he’s going to be okay.” 

“Bad news like Lizzie’s mommy got about Mr. Janssen?”

Trapper can hear the tears in Louise’s voice when she replies and he had forgotten that Olli Janssen was one of the first draftees from their neighborhood, had been deployed only a month when Helga got the news. 

“Yes, Cathy, like that. So daddy’s going to go visit his friend’s daddy but he’ll be back soon and everything will be okay. Take this punch outside now, please.”

“Mommy, should I ask my friends to leave? So daddy can be sad in peace and quiet?”

“Oh, no, honey. He wouldn’t want that. You’re such a good girl, such a sweet girl. He wants you to have a happy birthday, just like I do. Don’t you worry about this, I’ll take care of daddy.”

“Okay, but let me know what I can do to help, okay?”

“Let’s start with the punch.”


	5. “Not so long as you have salt and ketchup.”

After their guest have left and the girls have gone to bed with lingering goodnights and kisses, Trapper lays on the couch with his head in Louise’s lap while she calls the train station, reserves him a seat on a train to Portland, and calls Daniel Pierce in Crabapple Cove. He’s dozing, emotionally wrung out by the day, when she hangs up the call.

“He got through to B.J. earlier this morning,” Louise reports, rubbing a hand across his shoulder. “But it got cut off before he could get any answers. The operator in Seoul, Sparky? He said he thinks the line got cut before B.J. could answer. Daniel’s going to keep trying.” 

“So we still don’t know,” Trapper mumbled into her stomach. “What time does the train leave?” 

“Seven. I’ll take you to the station and come back for the girls. Carol said she can stay as long as we need.” 

“I’m not going to be able to sleep.” 

“Come to bed anyway.”

~.~

The next morning found Trapper as far north as he’d ever been. Daniel Pierce was waiting for him at the train station, looking as weary as Trapper had ever seen a man look as he leaned against the door of his car, and so very much like Hawkeye.

“Mr. Pierce, sir.” 

“It’s Doctor, actually, Trapper John, and I’ll thank you to call me Daniel.”

The trip to Crabapple Cove took a few hours and at first Trapper was unsure how to act. Daniel looked sad and angry in a way that was painfully familiar after months, decades it sometimes seemed like, of living with Hawkeye. Soon after they left the Portland city limits though, Daniel asked what Hawkeye had been like over there and Trapper found both of them laughing at his descriptions of their antics. He was just wrapping up the tale of Hawkeye’s latrine peace offering to North Korea when Daniel turned into a driveway leading up to a small wooden house that was framed all the way around by flower beds. 

They sat in silence for a moment after the laughter subsided, sorrow and loss settling back in, then Daniel opened his door and hopped out, as energetic as Trapper remembered Hawkeye being. It was odd to think of Hawkeye as being gone. Not gone in Korea but gone from Earth. Trapper reflected that the world was going to be a darker place without Hawkeye to try to light it on fire on occasion. 

“I’m not much of a cook though,” Daniel was saying when Trapper tuned back in. “But from Hawkeye’s letters I imagine that won’t be too much of a problem.” 

Trapper got out of the car, hauling his bag after him. “Not so long as you have salt and ketchup,” he’ said, trying to keep up the joke but feeling it fall flat. 

Daniel leaned on the car, looking over the roof at Trapper. “Thank you for coming, son,” he said, more serious than Trapper had seen him yet. “It means the world to have someone here with me who Ben, Hawkeye, thought so highly of.”

Knowing that if he tried to talk it would come out tear-filled, Trapper just nodded. 

“Well, come on, Let’s get you set up and you can call Louise, let her know you got here in one piece. Lovely woman, I should mention. I hope that you know that, it’s hard to find anyone so strong and loving in the face of crisis.” 

Trapper followed Daniel into the house as the man rambled on.


	6. "I hope the war doesn’t get too close."

It was dark when he woke up. He’d been in Crabapple Cove for a few days and while he hated the circumstances, he was glad that he’d gotten to meet the man he’d heard so much about from Hawkeye. 

Daniel had enlisted him in some chores he’d been waiting for Hawkeye to do when he came home and had given Trapper Hawkeye’s golf clubs when Trapper mentioned that he’d been thinking about starting to play again. They still hadn’t gotten through to Korea but Daniel had said last night that he thought Trapper should probably see about getting a ticket home soon to go take care of his family. 

Trapper lay in the bed, in the home Hawkeye had grown up in, listening to the sounds of the cove behind the house that Hawkeye had listened to growing up. He wondered what had woken him up when he realised he could hear Daniel speaking somewhere in the house. 

With some effort; Daniel was even better than Hawkeye at drowning his sorrows when the need arose and Trapper hadn’t been able to let him drink alone, Trapper got up and got dressed. When he opened the door he could hear Daniel speaking louder, talking through tears and Trapper hurriedly threw on a robe over his dungarees and T-shirt to ward off the early fall morning chill. He stopped in the washroom to use the facilities and wash his face, then followed Daniel’s voice down the hall to his study, wondering if he’d finally gotten hold of this B.J. character in Korea. 

As Trapper stepped through the threshold he could see Daniel sitting at his desk, phone clutched in his hand. 

“I will, Ben, Ben? Ben, are you there?” Daniel paused, his forehead creasing as he listened. “Oh, yes, operator. No, the call got disconnected. Down again? No, that’s okay. I got what I needed. Thank you, you have a good morning too.” 

As Trapper stepped into the room, Daniel looked up, his face looking years younger. Trapper was arrested by how much he suddenly looked just like Hawkeye, a chill going through him at the thought. 

“Trapper, he’s alive, my Ben is alive!”

It took a moment to shake the chill and re-engage. “What?” 

“Hawkeye, my boy, my Ben. He’s alive! He called. It was an Army SNAFU, they declared him dead but he’s just fine.” 

Daniel hopped up, rushing around the desk and grabbing Trapper in a hug that felt so familiar, just like Hawkeye’s. 

“He’s alive in Korea, seems to think the whole thing’s a big joke, don’t know where he gets his sense of humor.”

Trapper felt a grin take over his face. “That’s great! Hey, hey! Typical Army fuck up.”

“Come on, let me make some coffee and breakfast. I’ve got to get on the phone with half the town, give everyone the news. Do you want to call Louise? Oh, no, wait, it’s barely five in the morning. Sorry to wake you.”

Trapper grinned, following Daniel into the kitchen as he started making breakfast, listening to the man chatter just like his son did when he was excited. ‘Did’ in the present tense, what a great thing to be able to think.

~.~

The train from Portland to Boston the next morning was loud, much too loud for how much celebrating Trapper had done with Daniel the night before, but he put on his aviators and let the rocking lull him as he headed home, grinning at the girl sitting across from him with a notebook and pen.

She smiled back and he was suddenly struck with an idea. “Say, do you mind letting me borrow your pen and paper? I have a letter I need to write.”

She was beautiful, with a great smile, and reminded him of Louise when they first met. “Sure, I’ve got extras. Got this surgical lecture I went to yesterday to review.” She dug in her bag, handing over an extra pen and notebook. “Did you get good news? You look like you’ve got good news.” 

“The best. Absolute tiptop best in the world.” He settled the book against his knee and uncapped the pen. “Surgical lecture?”

“Sure, thoracic surgery. I know it’s unusual field for women but it’s what my father wanted for me to do and I love it.”

“How far into the specialty have you gotten? I have a friend who’s a thoracic surgeon, I could get you in touch.” 

He listened to her chatter about her classes and lectures, nodding as he put pen to paper.

_Dear Hawk,_

_Just left Crabapple Cove after hearing of your continued well being. I’m so happy to hear you’re okay. I’ve got some great news too, Louise is pregnant again! She told me today when I called to let her know you were still alive. I’m going to be a daddy again. It will be great news to give the guys when I go golfing this weekend with your clubs. Thanks for those, by the way._

_Sorry, it’s been so long but it took a while to get the courage to put pen to paper._

_I’m having a great conversation with this lady doctor student, I’ll try to get her to write you. She’s studying to be a thoracic surgeon! Also, she’s pretty cute, you’ve definitely done worse._

_I hope the war doesn’t get too close and I’ll write again when I’m not borrowing someone’s school supplies._

_Your friend,  
Trapper John, Civilian M.D._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started writing this fic while listening to Ho Hey by The Lumineers. 
> 
> This originally started as two different ideas but then while I was writing on the other one just kind of inserted itself into this fic. It is the longest fic I've ever posted and also the first multichapter fic I've ever posted. 
> 
> Thank you to those who read along as I posted and to those who will read later.
> 
> If you have constructive criticism, even something as nitpicky as 'hey, that semi-colon usage is wrong' then please, let me know. I am trying to improve my writing and welcome any help in so doing.


End file.
